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Macky
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Really getting into it |
Location: USA
Registered: November 2008
Messages: 973
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I've been reading about NW helping the young vagrant. Also about Warren and the people that he has helped. Then there's Paul with his crisis hotline tag. And of course Timmy has a hunger for helping too. Even I would like to help someone somehow. Perhaps everyone here wants to be of service.
So why do all these guys want to help? What's in it for them?
A while back, acam posted something to the effect that old men enjoy telling young guys about their experiences and dispensing advice based on them. (Makes old dudes feel wise or something.)
I guess that I feel that helping someone would give me a feeling of accomplishment, that would be testament to me, to my self worth.
Why do you guys desire to help?
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
Ps 133:1 NASB
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Good question, Macky. My life was pure shit as an adolescent, a teen and even an adult because there was no one I dared talk to about my sexuality. I hated myself and believed I was a deviant and everyone would hate me if they knew the real me. I can't go back into my past and re-educate myself but I can do the next best thing - I can educate others. With the wealth of information available today on the internet there is no excuse for a young person to grow up feeling the way some of us older dudes did. It's just a matter of guiding them to correct, safe places.
It's more than just a feeling of accomplishment when one of these young people thank you. It sort of makes me believe that I went through the crap I did as a youngster in order to motivate me to help others not feel the same way I did. It's better than getting an 'A' on a test or a promotion at work. The feeling is hard to describe actually.
Youth crisis hot-line 866-488-7386, 24 hr (U.S.A.)
There are people who want to help you cope with being you.
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Macky
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Really getting into it |
Location: USA
Registered: November 2008
Messages: 973
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"It's better than getting an 'A' on a test or a promotion at work. The feeling is hard to describe actually."
WOW, Paul. You said it and you said it well. You know, that's a good post to quote in a volunteer pamphlet!
Macky
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
Ps 133:1 NASB
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Aussie
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Really getting into it |
Registered: August 2006
Messages: 475
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You are to be commended for the work you do Paul as is NW in what he is doing. It is not easy and there are many pitfalls that have to be avoided
I am sure just a thankyou for being there (and I have had some from guys on this board) or a hug is priceless.
But as Timmy so eloquently said
And, set against this, is the awful helplessness we feel when waiting for someone who truly needs some sort of help to become ready to be helped.
I have encountered this many times both on and off the board but Timmy must have felt it hundreds of times. Sort of made me back off from trying to help.
I guess I failed the test that was put before me.
Aussie
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I'm going to take exception to the phrase "What's In It For Us?" To me that sounds so very selfish, pompous, self-serving, and egotistical. How about let's change that to "How Can We Make A Difference?"
It doesn't have to be anything spectacular either. I read NW's story carefully and then I posted it with his permission on my website where it has attracted a good deal of positive attention. I added this last bit at the end which I'll republish here:
"While homelessness is a generally well-known (if often overlooked) problem in this country, lesser known is the plight of homeless youth who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Transgender (LGBT). Of the estimated 1.6 million homeless youth in this country, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force reports that between 20 – 40% of them identify as LGBT. At least one quarter are driven away from their homes by parents or relatives, many are abused and in some cases turn to drugs or suicidal tendencies as a way out.
It can be said that you can't help everyone in need which is true, however, it takes a basic sense of humanity to be a hero to someone and more importantly, like this dignified gentle man, to make a difference.
Please, take a moment, write a cheque, donate some clothes, food, or consider becoming a volunteer for an organisation that assists LGBT youth in need and or a homeless youth shelter that is located in the city or town where you reside."
In this holiday season, it should take on a greater sense of urgency. Hell, buy a homeless person that you may even see daily a sandwich. It's about making a difference........and EVERYONE can do that.
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Aussie
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Really getting into it |
Registered: August 2006
Messages: 475
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Brody why do you NEED to be taking exception to that heading. Everyone who posts here has a differnt way of expressing themselves. By taking exception to someones statement you are doing the very thing you are complainig about and making yourself look pompouus, selfish self serving and egotistical.
Aussie
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Did you bother to read my entire post? My Taking Exception was NOT in anger or a bullying critique AT ALL.
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Aussie
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Really getting into it |
Registered: August 2006
Messages: 475
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Yes I did. Every word
Aussie
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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Because I gave myself such an awful time, I want to make sure, insofar as I can, that no other boy walks the same path.
It is the main thing that got me through my own pain.
There was something in it for Mother Theresa, too, or she would not have helped folk.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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No-one is purely altruistic, even if they may truly believe that they are. Helping someone else is satisfying, even though t can be frustrating. So those that do it, or even simply wish to do it, get a feeling of achievement, even of just being needed.
We all get it, to a greater or lesser degree, even if we just help and old lady cross a road she wants to cross.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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It is a truism that whatever we do is motivated by our own motives and the Thatcherites used this to make greed respectable. But people that help others, whether they are doing it because god tells them or to salve their conscience or just to be nice to other people ARE helping others.
And the sneered-at 'lady bountifuls' who help because it makes them feel good and look good in church or the local Conservative club do good too.
And the degree of selfishness involved is not at all easy to discern because nobody can see inside another's head.
So when Macky asks that question, I agree with Brody that it could be better phrased "Why are you so nice to a comparatively ungrateful stranger?"
And perhaps I ought to leave out the 'comparatively ungrateful' bit because, however grateful they were it would make no difference. We don't do it for the gratitude - indeed the gratitude gets in the way.
It is the same sort of care and love one gives to ones own children, I think. My mother seemed to me to think I had a duty to be grateful and although I really appreciated the things my parents did for me I don't think I felt gratitude as a very strong emotion.
I think I would have been happier and would have appreciated them more if they had shown the sort of unconditional acceptance of me that I think NW shows. If they had I might have been able to come out to them. I think they thought that they ought to press me to exert myself and have high aspirations and 'be successful' and they never relented in that pressure. I felt I could never do well enough for them.
I tried very hard not to do that to my own children and only partly succeeded. I'm doing better with my grandchildren though, and am offering them an exercise in unconditional acceptance of myself when I turn up to collect them from school in tights! 
It is amazing how valuable that unconditional acceptance is if you can offer it.
In short doing good things for ones own motives is still doing good things. And people that do good things are to be applauded however much satisfaction they get from it. And not many of us show the courage necessary.
Love,
Anthony
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What's in it for me is, ultimately, self-respect.
Oh, there's much else. Stuff about the occasional rewards making up for he many frustrations. The feeling that it's something I owe to those who have gone before - the gay pioneers who contributed so much to my ability to live happily as an out gay man. The determination to try to prevent others going through the kind of hell I went through as an adolescent (much as timmy says - though my own hell was less to do with the accident of my sexuality, and far more to do with the whole person I am). There's a tinge of my religious perspective (there is "of God" in everyone, and we need to try to recognise and nurture that in each other: a basically Quaker view).
But all of these simply contribute to one thing. I have a desperate need to be able to look at myself and broadly approve of what I see (which doesn't mean that I don't recognise my frequent failures). It does, of course, come down to childhood - a feeling of considerable worthlessness engendered by my father, because he was unable to conceive that my way of being a normal healthy boy (introverted, intellectual, non-sporting, emotional and physically craving affection) was right for me: his own childhood having been forced into a pattern of sporting excellence, academic achievement and "big boys don't cry". And then there was the bullying at school... I'm sure many of us know the kind of thing!
I fought my way painfully to a position where I can respect, appreciate, cherish and even love myself. I will do - ultimately - whatever I have to in order to continue to think well of myself. So, when a kid like that crops up in my life, I have little option but to accept the considerable challenge he is posing!
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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But, and this is the nub of it, you could have just given him a £5 note and salved your conscience. Instead you chose to put yourself to some inconvenience and emotional anguish.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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timmy wrote:
> But, and this is the nub of it, you could have just given him a £5 note and salved your conscience.
He would not have known that I'd cheated, but I would. My conscience can be a hyperactive little beast at times.
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
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... I'll answer; and perhaps somewhere amongst my reply, you'll maybe find motivation for your own giving.
For me to be able to tell you some of the "Why", it is perhaps necessary for you to know some of the "Who".
I grew up in a culture of "public" service; a family which through more than 350-years in Canada found each new generation (my elder brother and I were the fifteenth) losing through the excesses of alcoholism the fortune the previous one had worked so frugally to accumulate.
My brother and I were both reared in rural Québec, our family being the only english-speaking family for hundreds of miles in any direction. This being a community whereby the family-owned and -run business was truly the only game in town. He and I learned from a very young age that with this largesse came responsibility, and accountability, both to ourselves and to those around us that depended on our family in every way imaginable for it's livelihood, its' very existence; a community sheltered in company-owned housing, company-owned and -run schools and shops, company-owned and -run hospital and health-care clinics and services, company-owned churches, company-owned hotel, resort and country-club and golf course; a community of successive generations of Québecois living, working and retiring, all without ever having known anything other than my family's enterprise their entire lives.
My grandfather, of whom I spoken here before, was a difficult man to know and understand, and I'll speak more of him in a moment or two. His only surviving son, my father, was even more so; the wayward offspring that would likely someday inherit the world as he then knew it; who was afeared of it; who continually refused to don the mantle that he was destined for; and who eventually learned the ropes of the company enterprise from our family's then only competition in the industry from some 4000 miles, or more, away from its' home base; who because of that fear, and because he was genetically predisposed to it, succumbed to that daemon "alcohol" just as surely as 13 generations of my family had done before him, and as my elder brother did a generation later.
Grandfather had only three passions in his life; these being my grandmother, fly-fishing and the family enterprise in that order. The latter two I fully understand, whereas the former I surely do not. His was an arranged marriage, as many in his day were (we're speaking of the late 1800's, early 1900's here); an expediency, good for business, and solely driven by no other intent. Like generations before him in my family, he, a white, english-speaking, anglo-saxon, Protestant (Scottish Knoxian Presbyterian in truth) American male, married a french-speaking, Roman-catholic, Canadian female from within the community we did business. Unlike those before them, and quite un-atypically, my grandparents had only had three children (he had 14-siblings, whilst she had 17); their first-born, a son, succumbed to the Spanish-flu epidemic of 1918-19; the second eldest, a daughter, in the mid-1930's married well into the, then fledgling, Bell Canada group of companies, leaving their third, another son and my father, the responsibility of carrying on the blood-line and growth of the family enterprise. Ironically, given the culture and mind-set of his background, it was my grandfather who was my saviour, my white-knight to whom I turned as it were, who championed me when the truth of my sexuality became known in a rather awkward and public fashion; a circumstance I've spoken of before, and it likely will bear retelling should the need again ever arise. In truth, I suspect that my father was probably, like me, homosexual; I know for a certainty that at least four others within my ancestry were as well; and perhaps at another time, I'll provide more detail about why I assume this of my father, and just how I've come to that realization and conclusion. Although he and I never spoke of this, it was to me he turned when he dying, asking that I move home to care for him, me believing that it must have had something to do with this very circumstance and situation in his own life.
A word or two about my mother, and her marriage, or rather her three divorces and four marriages to my father, would not be remiss. In a word, theirs was a genuine love match. There simply can be no other explanation for it. My father, a english-speaking (although in truth fluently multi-lingual) American, had broken tradition in not marrying a french-speaking, Roman-catholic, Canadian female, but preferring instead to go against the tide of that tradition, marrying an english-speaking only, British, female of uncertain faith. She was the third (the second of two daughters) of four children. Her parents (and my other grandparents, although I never knew this second grandfather, his having passed away just months after I was born) emigrated to Canada in the 1880's inorder that they might marry, together out of their fear and both their family's prejudice; both were you see, a "Campbell"; two different clans, one Scottish and Presbyterian, the other Irish and Roman-catholic; it then being bad enough that a Campbell of one clan would marry a Campbell of another, but for one to be a Presbyterian whilst the other was Roman-catholic was unheard of, and the very stuff that clans wars were made of. Lord alone knows just how they, in the first place, came to meet and know one-another, let alone fall deeply in love and want to marry.
More about my mother. Given her family background, she was no stranger to alcohol, nor its' excesses; but she was low on tolerance when it came to physical brutality, and the ravages that this brutality wrought out of alcohol excess visited upon the family; explaining the many divorces and remarriages; it taking my father's accident and his loss of mobility, before he would forsake the alcohol forever and a day henceforth, and thereafter, and then and only then, were the two of them capable of finding the peace of mind and satisfaction which their fourth and final marriage brought to them.
I've spoken of my father's citizenship as being American, and that of my mother's as being British. They were; but to understand the dichotomy of this one has to understand the paradigm that existed within the fabric of Canadian society which prevailed in their day and age. With the Balfour Declaration of 1947, and the attendant Statutes of Westminister then enacted (which also partitioned Palestine and a number of historically noteworthy conventions), Canadian Citizenship became a reality for the first time officially July 1st, 1947; all those who had passed before, whilst nominally Canadian, were in truth, whatever they had been before they, or their families, settled in Canada, and only became Canadian if they formally adopted Canadian Citizenship during a period of amnesty granted by the Canadian Parliament coincident to the passage of the Westminister Statues. Neither of my parents ever so elected, nor in fact did scores of natively born "Canadians" born here prior to 1947. This was not an unusual circumstance for the times; but, does explain the disparity of citizenship that prevails to this day within many a family of both my parents', and their parents' generation. This too, accounts for why, to this day my Canadian Passport carries only the latter-half of my hyphenated "legal" surname, whilst my American one carries both the first and second half of a name which survives simply from a marriage-contract sometime in the early 1600's that guaranteed the name would continue in perpetuity. My grandfather, whilst continuing the tradition, and the inclusion of that first half on all of his own children's birth certificates, and requiring of my father that he too do the same, quietly dropped day-to-day usage of it sometime in the 1920's, choosing simply to be known by the latter half alone.
I dissemble again, as I'm wont to lately; but not without reason. It having been somewhat important in my having told you some of the who, it's surely just as important for me to now tell some of the why.
Grandfather realizing that my father likely could, and would, not ever assume the helm of the family enterprise, and understanding that neither my brother or I were of an age to be able to do so ourselves, made suitable arrangements to ensure the continued survival of the endeavour. This not-with-standing the reality that he, himself, had not directly managed the company since his retirement in 1945, and whom, through successive Board's of Director's and operating Management Teams, had continued to grow the business exponentially in the boom years following the second war. A potential, and suitable, buyer from within the very community where we had earned our livelihood, and so admirably profited from it, was located, nurtured, and finally encouraged to take over. Trusts were established, holdings divested world-wide to fund them, and transfer of ownership became a done deal. This was 1960; and hard on the heels of my father's protracted recovery from an industrial accident three-years previously whereby he had nearly lost his life, and had been told that he likely would never again walk on his own two feet, and from whence he returned, for the fourth and final time, to his wife, walking off the aeroplane with the aid of two canes, having spent those intervening three years lying flat on his back in a "Styker-frame" at the Shaunessey Veteran's Hospital in Vancouver.
Some 10-years would pass before much of that which my grandfather had put into place when divesting the family of its' holding, would come to fruition, and half a decade more before full realization was achieved.
Whilst my brother squandered his inheritance, fueled I'm sure by alcohol excess, trusts established for both of his daughters continue to this day, as do trusts for both of my own two sons, and my cousin Andrew and his daughters, the immediate progeny of my father's sister.
I too, squandered much of my own inheritance, and a large part of my own separately accumulated wealth from a disparate variety of sources; but, not though excesses of addiction or otherwise, but simply through my own stupidity, and lack of common sense. I, and twelve other investors, greed getting the better of us all, lost our shirts, and the business we founded, in a series of raids undertaken by authorities on "Bathhouses" in Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal and Halifax in the late 1970's. In truth we should have known, and did know, better; but the $25 grand a week profit after all taxes and expenses, that each shareholder derived from the business, clouded our collective judgment, and we fell folly to that greed and the practices of the management team we hired to run the endeavour on our behalf. Prostitution is "legal" in Canada; whereas the provision of "bawdy-houses" is not. Bathhouses, regulated under varying degees of Provincial Law, and the dissemination and receipt of sexual favours therein, being legal, in so far as the Law dictates; but, and this is the caveat, only if money never, ever, directly changes hand for the respective services. Bathhouses, continuing to this day, operate on the basis that customers pay an admission fee to gain entry; and depending on the fees levied, a key to a locker, or a room (such as they are, with them varying considerably depending on just how up- or down-scale the venture may be) goes with the territory. Management of the Bathhouse, is never supposed to be directly responsible for provision of suitable servicing bodies for the locker- or room-paying clientele. The locker- and room-paying clientele are ideally supposed to be the engine that drives their own servicing needs. Late in the game, it became apparent to me, and my business partner (a child-hood buddy, straight, and now residing in Australia), that management at at least four of our facilities were encouraging, and profiting from, "paid" hustling talent that they then were allowing without fee, to cruise our clubs with impunity; these "paid" sex-workers were then jobbing out their services to the legitimate paying clientele of the same facilities, and trafficking and supplying drugs to that clientele.
Understandably, authorities took a dim view of the situation, and after repeated warnings, were forced to take action. Neither my buddy or I could galvanize the other investors in taking appropriate action against the offending management teams, nor the "paid" sex-workers they were profiting from. The rest is history. In Toronto, several million dollars worth of damage was taken against our club there, in effect putting that facility irrevocably out of business, with similar situations prevailing at others over the coming months. To put not too fine point on it, my buddy and I lost our shirts, and title to property in Toronto, Calgary and Ottawa which we had personally underwritten in part, to fund our investment in the clubs, chain-wide, and in those respective cities.
This was the free and easy 1970's in Canada. Being homosexual had been legal here since March of 1967, with decriminalization fully realized late in 1971 with the passage of the final amendments to our Criminal Code. Safe-sex was unheard of, gratuitous self-gratification was the rule of the day, with damn all torpedoes and full speed ahead being the rally cry. I lived at 33 Wood Street, a luxuriant apartment residence abutting The Maple Leaf Gardens, and 20 Carlton Street, and it's family-styled hotel. Xaviera Hollender occupied the Penthouse of the building, writing her way into fame as the "Happy Hooker". I never needed to leave the building to satisfy carnal urges, finding it only necessary to drop a line from my fourteenth floor balcony and troll the sidewalks below for suitable fodder. Young men flocked to Toronto in droves from all manner of suburban and rural communities, many finding not any great success, but simply a never-ending boulevard of broken dreams and failure.
During this time-period, and over and above my private commercial endeavours, I was gainfully employed, in turns by Municipal, Provincial and Federal agencies, most often in the provision of social service support; this being prior to my moving on to the more lucrative field of Market Research, and influence peddling, and 25-years of self-employment in that field. Largely because of my own youth, and those carnal needs I previously alluded to, I came to know intimately the darker underbelly of Toronto's homosexual street and club culture. On more occasions than I care to remember, I nursed back to health from my home ailing, and damaged, youth; with knives, and a gun pulled on me in my own home being still too vivid to want to recall. Too, in this period I coerced, and otherwise inveigled, local merchants to hire the most worthy of these unlikely street urchins, hopefully helping them to get off the streets and find some semblance of stability in their young lives. This practice would continue for 10-years, and diminished with the passage of time once I had consented to move home to care for my ailing father in 1985.
The background, and circumstances surrounding my two adopted children has be told and retold, and could well support a further telling given some appropriate time and compelling reason; but not now. Ryan has recently been covered in another thread.
Why did I do what I did? Whether that be the 1960's and Jon, the 1970's and my club-life, the 1980's and my children or the here and now, and Ryan? The answer is plain; being simply, because I was there, and I could. Did I have to do so? Yes. Just as we all should have, given similar circumstances, and the times.
Is the need as strong today? Yes, and likely stronger; albeit for a variety of reasons that differ radically from those back then.
Will I continue to do so? Yes, for all the reasons I have stated in the past. Humankind has a fiduciary responsibility to care for the disaffected, the disillusioned, the disadvantaged and damaged amongst us. None of us excel at the same level of expertise, nor perform with the same degree of competence. It is beholden upon all of us to help everyone we have within our grasp reach their true and full potential. This alone is the full measure of the wealth of a society; money is solely the means of keeping score, and frankly a grossly inadequate one at that.
My grandmother, from my earliest of recollections of her, advocated that although we may not be on this earth for a very long time, whilst were here, we better damn well have a good time. She also counseled, wisely I have since learned, that when you are the treasure, it's fair dinkum to expect to be hunted.
I have lived, and continue to live, well, and have had a simply marvelous time doing so. I, too, have been vaingloriously hunted a time or two or three or four, and upon at least one of those occasions consented to my being caught. This I have achieved without my having ever consciously hurt another soul, whether physically or emotionally, and not once ever have I turned away a person in distress if they have mustered the courage to approach me, a fellow traveler, on that self-same boulevard of broken dreams.
Warren C. E. Austin
The Gay Deceiver
Toronto, Canada
[Updated on: Tue, 08 December 2009 11:20]
"... comme recherché qu'un délice callipygian"
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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And that comes right back to what is in it for you.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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Macky
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Really getting into it |
Location: USA
Registered: November 2008
Messages: 973
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"It is the main thing that got me through my own pain."
Wow. You mean, like, since you were focusing on the other guy's problem, you didn't dwell on your own problem so much?
And, yes, I'm sure Mother Teresa got much more out of her giving than she gave, (which does not diminish the value of her life). It's wonderful how people are made that way! I mean, if we really do what makes us happy, we end up serving others' needs. It's almost analogous to the function of greed in free markets where everyone does well because a few try to get ahead of the pack.
Macky
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
Ps 133:1 NASB
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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Macky wrote:
> "It is the main thing that got me through my own pain."
>
> Wow. You mean, like, since you were focusing on the other guy's problem, you didn't dwell on your own problem so much?
Not really, no. It's far more complex than that. In many ways it lets me know how lucky I am. In other ways it lets me repay something I actually don't owe. And in other ways it lets me understand myself. And that isn't even scratching the surface
[Updated on: Tue, 08 December 2009 20:43]
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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Macky
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Really getting into it |
Location: USA
Registered: November 2008
Messages: 973
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"there is "of God" in everyone, and we need to try to recognise and nurture that in each other: a basically Quaker view"
Not really just Quaker. Everything from the "Godfire" of the ancients to the "indwelling spirit" of modern bible thumpers have spoken of the divine within man. But religion aside, it's a good doctrine. It leads one respect his fellow man.
"introverted, intellectual, non-sporting, emotional and physically craving affection"
Sounds like one helluva nice guy!
Macky
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
Ps 133:1 NASB
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Macky
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Really getting into it |
Location: USA
Registered: November 2008
Messages: 973
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I love reading your posts, Warren! Have you ever written any stories for the story shelf here? When you get into your rhythm, it reminds me of Disney's Winnie the Pooh movie, where the character Owl tells some tale from his life.
An interesting family and an interesting life. Thanks to our Capitalist system, there'll always be successful people dedicating the fruits of their labor to good causes. From Mellon and Carnegie to Gates and Buffet. Everyone, rich or poor, just wants to help. Wow. How do we reconcile that with man's inhumanity to man that we see all too often?
Macky
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
Ps 133:1 NASB
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Very sensible. Anthony.
Hugs
Nigel
I dream of boys with big bulges in their trousers,
Never of girls with big bulges in their blouses.
…and look forward to meeting you in Cóito.
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Macky wrote:
> Not really just Quaker. Everything from the "Godfire" of the ancients to the "indwelling spirit" of modern bible thumpers have spoken of the divine within man. But religion aside, it's a good doctrine. It leads one respect his fellow man.
Oh, I agree that there are elements of it in many religions. But the Society of Friends is - I think - the only religion (or philosophy ... opinions are divided and it's possible although rare to be a Buddhist Quaker, or even a Muslim one) that has made it central. Central, in fact, to the point of a determined insistence on proceeding by consensus, fierce insistence on equality and diversity (no priests or leaders), and an extraordinary resistance to hierarchies and external pressures.
I'm not formally a Quaker myself, by the way, though I'm increasingly drawn to them, and admire them almost without reservation. It's the insistence on doing that which one understands one has to do, on living a testimony to that which one believes (ethically, not necessarily religiously) that touches a chord in me ... and why I feel too fallible to formally join.
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
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